The invention is based on a washing machine laundry drum, which is set up to remove water from wet laundry at high revolutions and has a circulating drum shell which is bent from a thin-walled material strip to form a cylinder or flat truncated cone with a small cone angle (≦approximately 15°) in such a way that the end sections of the material strip make contact in a connecting seam.
A laundry drum of this type is known from EP 0 395 859 B1. This laundry drum indicates a conventionally used connecting seam, with which the end edges of the drum shell strip are bent and interlock with one another and are formed by an additional crimping such that the interlocked end edges cannot detach from one another. Laundry drums with a connecting seam embodied in this way are suited to removing water at high revolutions with spinning speeds of up to 1000 rpm. EP 0 395 859 B1 also proposes providing the connecting seam with step-shaped embossings disposed at right angles thereto, so as thus to render the seam stable such that laundry drums formed in this way are suited to spinning revolutions of up to approximately 1500 rpm. For laundry drums which are to be operated with even higher spinning speeds, additional measures must be taken to inhibit the tractive forces in the drum cover from becoming sufficiently large to prevent the seamed and embossed connecting seam from tearing.
In a further laundry drum of this type in DE 101 63 186 C1, the end sections comprise a crenellated toothing system, the teeth of which engage in each case in the tooth gap of the mating end edge and are formed in such a way that the base lines of the tooth gaps butting against one another form an at least approximately straight line and the teeth abut in the non-toothed region of the end sections outside the drum above the material strip and are connected fixedly there to the region. Although this type of connecting seam fulfills all the technical objectives set, it may however be too expensive in one or the other case since both end sections have to be cut relatively precisely in a toothed manner in order to achieve the desired stability. Furthermore, a tool for such edge formation is more expensive than for smooth cuttings and wears more quickly.